How about SDSU?
The guys I’m talking about are doing electrical engineering, chip design, optics, etc. Working at Apple and Google, but previously at very early stage start-ups. I don’t know enough about the different pathways for engineering but maybe in these cases what they were doing in lab for their PhD research was more immediately relevant than any credential (which neither has). And they hire people with similar qualifications/experience.
I realize this post is about non-CA schools, but just throwing this program out there to see if he might be interested- since you describe him as academically well rounded and quirky - he can earn 2 degrees in 5 years, a BA in Liberal Arts (emphasis in physics) and a BS in Engineering at Washington University (ABET certified) with this program:
It may give him the breadth and time to discover which pathway he is most interested in…
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IMO, the top tier OOS publics that your son should consider for engineering are:
UIUC, UMD and Purdue.
(All 3 have lots of CA kids)
The next tier (and I don’t mean this as a diss, but rather in terms of relative strength and also ease of admission):
UPitt, Penn State, Ohio State and Rutgers.
Finally, not a public, but I would also recommend checking out Stevens Institute of Technology.
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Just popping in to say Madison is a fabulous college town, a quirky, liberal mid-sized capital city in a purple-ish state. Wonderful food scene, music, arts – campus sits on a lake, with the iconic Terrace. Big sports for those who want it, about 10% greek life participation so completely avoidable. My kid loved that parts of campus had a busy, urban vibe but then there was also the quieter Lakeshore part of campus, with running trails etc. About 90 min drive from Chicago O’Hare, and there are frequent buses between campus and O’Hare.
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Is there a way he could shadow at your husband’s work, or otherwise get a bit more signal that engineering is the path he wants? I don’t want to derail the thread, but I’m wondering if either A) engineering or B) a large state school is the right academic home for him.
You mentioned that he loved Kenyon, Oberlin, other LACs. In addition to the small, tight-knit scale, they also tend to prioritize exploration and taking time before deciding on a major. I agree the 3+2 schemes aren’t terribly compelling, for a few reasons, but the flip side is that ABET programs are trying to fit so much in, they often don’t leave a lot of room for academic wandering. And, culturally, large state schools are just so, so big. Our D22 is at Cal, and the experience has been good, but it’s been a world of difference (in a not-positive way) from the 6,000-person undergrad my wife and I loved. (We’re trying to cap the schools our 2025 twins are looking at to ~8,000 undergrads.)
Additionally, large state universities are very often so focused on getting students through the machine, they require 17yos to commit to a major at the moment of application. And, yes, they can change majors (and even colleges), but it’s not the same as having that room to breathe and try different things on.
I have no doubt that your son has the aptitude for engineering; I would just want to have a bit more signal from him that it’s what he really wants, if he were my kid. Are there engineering clubs at his school (robotics, model airplane/flight, computer programming) or in the community (programming meet-ups, hackerspaces) that he could spend some time with? Do you or your husband have friends who are engineers who would be up for getting a coffee with him to chat about their work? Without more exposure to engineering, I would be a bit worried about whether it was the right fit, especially for a student who really clicked with the cozy vibe at small liberal arts schools.
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Bucknell is a LAC with an ABET accredited engineering program.
Lewisburg is a picturesque little town in central PA. Campus is gorgeous—all red brick Georgian buildings and green space. The. Susquehanna River runs along the edge of campus.
Lewisburg is about 90 minutes from both Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Other closer (but smaller) airports include Scranton, Wilkes Barre-Allentown, and Harrisburg.
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A couple of thoughts:
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You are basing your engineering choices for your son on a family and friends history of working in the Silicon Valley…and also some Cal Tech grads (I don’t think Caltech has ABET accreditation). Your student just might not want to work in the Silicon Valley for any number of reasons. Your metrics might not end up applying to him when he graduates.
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I’m not sure I understand what you are looking for. If you are looking for strong engineering programs, there have been some excellent suggestions made upstream that you don’t seem to want to consider.
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How many of these colleges has your son visited. When he goes, he should ask for an engineering specific tour. Some colleges have that.
I’ve made suggestions I think you might want to consider like Marquette. He can look at Santa Clara University (although I’m not sure the cost would be worth it when you have so many great CA publics).
I would suggest folks who did NOT go to Caltech. And perhaps some folks who work in regular engineering jobs.
Many colleges have an intro to engineering course that helps students decide IF they want to even deal with engineering. I have to ask…what makes your son curious about engineering? It is very possible there are other majors and careers that might end up being more appealing to him.
I would help him find a college where he can explore lots of possible majors/careers…this could include engineering.
One of my kids was an engineering major in undergrad. The kid loved the coursework but decided they hated the idea of working as an engineer so picked up a second major that more aligned with something they wanted to actually DO.
Engineering isn’t for everyone!
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You got some excellent suggestions on this thread. Plus the OP to it tells a little more about this student.
What happened to these ideas?
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the strengths of University of New Mexico
University of New Mexico is a smaller state flagship (about 16,000 undergrads). Full ABET accredited engineering program. UNM offers all engineering specialties: biomedical; chemical & biological; civil & construction; computer science; electrical & computer; mechanical; nuclear; and general engineering. Has a well respected quantum computing dept.
Physics dept is small but offers a full range of exposure to different subfields.
A student can switch back and forth between the College and Arts & Science and the College of Engineering without a much difficulty. (My daughter started out in LAS, switched to CE the back to LAS as she explored her career path.)
New Mexico has 2 National Research Lab-- Sandia in Albuquerque, Los Alamos in Los Alamos, plus the 2 military research labs Kirtland AFRL (space vehicle design) in Albuquerque, White Sands ARL (cybersecurity, computational & informational science) in Alamogordo. All the labs offer internships for UNM students.
Intel has major fabrication and research facility in Rio Rancho (suburb of ABQ). They also offer internships for UNM students.
UNM has automatic scholarship for high achieving students
New Mexico is a blue state with a progressive governor.
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Lewisburg is >2.5 hours from Philadelphia and 3.5 hours from Pittsburgh by car.
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You might also consider adding UVA to your list. While its engineering school is not top-ranked, it’s still very strong (I know a number of really successful UVA engineering alumni), the school’s reputation is obviously very strong, and there are great schools of liberal arts and commerce if he decides that engineering is not for him (something that happens not infrequently).
The 3.7 might be a little low, although that’s all about school context; if it puts him in the top 5-10% of his class, I think UVA is worth consideration.
Silicon Valley has a bias towards hiring super-smart people with elite degrees, even if their qualifications aren’t directly relevant, on the basis that they’ll figure it out anyway and probably come up with an innovative solution in the meantime. I’ve also done (and been offered out of the blue) technical jobs despite having no qualifications in anything close to engineering (my PhD is in theoretical math).
But it’s not a great basis for career planning: since ending up at an elite institution at least for your grad degree is quite important (and often preferably for undergrad as well since the key filter is “are you super-smart”?). My S23 was smart but laid back with similar stats (3.7UW/1530 SAT) though fewer APs (5, mostly math and physics) and didn’t have much success at UCs (eventually got into UCSC off the waitlist and he likes it there). He’s doing what he finds interesting (astrophysics) without worrying about job prospects, and we’ll see where he ends up (or if he even does enough to get into a PhD program).
Is your kid interested in engineering or is it that everyone says doing engineering is a good career path? It’s much harder to get in (and therefore he may end up at a lower ranking school) compared to doing math or physics. And engineering degrees are more about preparing for a job than a PhD, even though you mention an interest in grad school.
I know the typical advice is that it’s easier to switch out of engineering than into it, but I would think hard about whether it is really what he is interested in as opposed to something less directly career-focused that he can excel in and perhaps go do an elite PhD afterwards. I certainly wouldn’t dismiss the physics or even the LAC route.
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UDel has a great engineering department, and a nice honors college. This student would get merit, used to be based mostly on test scores, now gpa is more important, but I do think they still like high test scores. Beautiful campus, nice Main Street, hour to the beach, 1 1/2 to Philadelphia, 2 hours to nyc and DC. Students are happy, a bit of a party school. Not a lot of snow!
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I am in one of these families. My husband went to UCSD and Stanford. Our son went to Caltech and transferred out mainly because he likes being around people who have lives outside of academia. He ended up with a degree in computer engineering.
(My father-in-law and uncle in law were also Caltech graduates.)
My husband noted that the “super-smart” employees like being independent and often don’t like “playing well with others” and sharing their information. You can’t do that when your customers are heavy hitters and want to see contracts completed.
His firm had an issue with a “super smart” employee who wanted to work and develop his own theories, but his ideas weren’t being supported by any funding by customers, clients, or the company. He was hired at the same time as my husband.
He would be asked and assigned to help out on particular contracts within his strengths, and he basically ignored them so he was laid off. He was immediately scooped up by another company but soon was laid off because he had the same issues- wanting to do his own thing that had nothing to do with a client or company account.
Husband and daughter prefer hiring State students from SDSU, SLO/Pomona, Fresno/ San Jose, Arizona, Washington and Oregon and says that they make really good employees.
Our eldest daughter was interviewed by Harvard and got into Yale and the UCs. She is “super smart” but she’s also a very social person.
She ended up attending University of Buffalo because she was looking at a full ride there and medical school; their bio engineering coursework led her into their engineering and the computer software program. The State University of New York (SUNY) system is very underrated. We’re from San Diego and she was there for a total of five years because of a change of major but she dealt with the snow and tundra of the Northeast but took advantage of that time indoors to study and tutor.
She graduated with a double major degree in electrical engineering and computer software. She’s headhunted all of the time. She makes very good money and she knows her stuff.
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They do “make really good employees”. And the guy you mention should have gone and founded his own startup, but it sounds like he didn’t have the interpersonal skills to raise money and run his own company. Horses for courses.
Pushing a smart 17 year old kid to just be “a really good employee” for the rest of their working life is one thing (but sort of sad). Pushing them to study a professionally-oriented major like engineering when they may or may not have much interest in that career is much worse.
What are this kid’s dreams? If they don’t know now then give them time to figure that out. It’s already been mentioned that they could go to grad school. This is not a poor family with a kid who has to be self-supporting immediately after college, let alone make enough to support their parents.
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May want to look at how easy or difficult changing engineering major is at each school. Some large state universities have their popular majors filled to capacity, so changing into them can be highly competitive based on college GPA and perhaps other factors.
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But if he’s interested in mechanical engineering (which you noted earlier), then I think ABET becomes much more important. I agree that in Silicon Valley, especially in CS and Computer Engineering, it doesn’t seem to be a requirement.
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Sure. I think we are all operating from our own contexts. I actually do think he is most likely to end up back here, eventually. It’s certainly where his friends and family are, and we have a robust network to help him get started. But it’s helpful to hear from people with different experiences.
I’m not sure where I indicated lack of interest in other people’s suggestions! I’m not in a position to give an immediate thumbs up or down to these thoughtful contributions but I appreciate them and will share them with the family. He can’t apply everywhere. He’ll need to do more research (fairly quickly) into these options.
As I believe I mentioned above, he has unfortunately not visited any of these big state schools (although we did a wintry walk through an unfortunately empty U Minnesota campus) – nor is he likely to do so before the spring. His interests have been evolving since we first started thinking about schools a year ago and although the culture of some of the midwestern liberal arts schools really appealed to him (and he still thinks about going to one and studying physics), his stint at WPI this summer has led him to think that some form of engineering (not programming – more likely mechanical or electrical) might be a good pathway. So we’re expanding the list as he continues to explore (via the school robotics team and his continuing physics and bio coursework, for example.)
I’ve read those suggestions and although they weren’t really within the scope of this inquiry, I’ll add them to the pile. Thank you.
This is easy – we live in Silicon Valley and everyone we know is an engineer. Some went to places like New Mexico Tech or Montana State; others went to Caltech and Stanford. I think as he continues the process of discernment this will be an important step.
Yep, this would be ideal. And there are a bunch of schools on our list where this is possible (Lafayette, Union, University of Rochester, Brandeis, Boulder, maybe others). Frustratingly a lot of the CA state schools require more certainty about what one wants to study from the outset (e.g. you need to apply to a specific engineering program at Cal Poly, and Santa Cruz doesn’t have most kinds of engineering so you kinda need to know what you want before you go there.) This is, in part, why we are curious about other strong state flagship schools. Hence the request to vet our list of state schools with strong engineering programs (which is, as I explained, a subset of the whole list.)
If you scroll down in that thread you’ll see an August update from me. At this point I’m kicking the tires on our list, trying to figure out what can come off, and double-checking that our assumptions are correct. And because S25’s interests are evolving, the list is heterogeneous and will undoubtedly include schools that he ultimately decides aren’t right for him – but for now, the goal is to give him options in the spring.
This thread went in some interesting directions. Given the lift we have before us over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to beg off debating the merits of hiring “super smart” people and/or defending our son’s evolving interest in engineering, although I appreciate people’s concern. Sticking to the original question, it’s helpful to hear people’s perspectives about various state schools with strong engineering programs and what makes them unique and appealing.
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Rating the three you’ve mentioned in my neck of the woods - I think people on CC tend to rate UMD higher than VA Tech, but I don’t know why. Pitt is lower than both. All are ABET accredited and I think really the thing to think about is what environment does your son want? Urban (Pitt), Suburban (MD), or town on the edge of rural (VT)?
I don’t think any of them give much merit aid (Pitt seems slightly more generous for engineering school then they are for arts and sciences).
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